Database of Virtual Art: “The Database of Virtual Art documents the rapidly evolving field of digital installation art. This complex, research-oriented overview of immersive, interactive, telematic and genetic art has been developed in cooperation with established media artists, researchers and institutions.”

Complimentary & Recommended Reading / Websites:

Below are several links that you will find useful throughout the semester, as complimentary readings and or visuals to your assigned readings and essays. These readings are not required, but may be helpful to you in understanding the overall context of many of your required readings and/or assignments. I will continue to add to this list throughout the semester, so keep checking back. Please notify me of any missing or broken links.

Jeanette Winterson’s Home website: since we’ll be reading more of her work this semester, you might want to browse around her website, which is loaded with all kinds of interesting places, visuals, and even a discussion board.

Socially-Conscious, Activist & Transgressive Art:

The Social and Public Art Resource Center: This is a really wonderful site, representing one of the most significant public art centers in the world. Here, you can find out about the hundreds of community murals SPARC has created, preserved, and recorded.

Sniggle.net: The Culture Jammers Encyclopedia: “For the cyberian who has everything, including an attitude, take two doses of Culture Jammer’s Encyclopedia and call us in the morning. You’ll find a bevy of sassy skeptics who are ready, willing, and able to deconstruct society’s hottest hucksters, hackers, and antiheroes. Got the millenium-bug blues? Luxuriate in a lukewarm bath of literary hoaxes. Stuck in an ill-fitting operating system? Witness the inaugural Bill Gates pie-throwing contest, then slip into something a little more uncomfortable…” – Yahoo!’s Picks of the Week

Adbusters: “We are a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age. Our aim is to topple existing power structures and forge a major shift in the way we will live in the 21st century. To this end, Adbusters Media Foundation publishes Adbusters magazine, operates this website and offers its creative services through PowerShift, our advocacy advertising agency.”

Culture Jamming 101 “Andrew Boyd, author, artist and grassroots publicist, self-proclaimed “pioneer of viral activism” and associate professor at the New York University founded and directed for several years the Arts and Action Program of United for a Fair Economy (UFE) and now offers workshops and training in Culture Jamming, Media Pranks and Viral Communication. He was the driving force behind the Election Campaign Parody “Million Billionaire March” in 2000. The performance of hundreds of New Yorkers dressed up as millionaires demanding to be freed completely from social responsibility in exchange for their contributions to the presidential election campaigns. The Million Billionaire March combined elements of Street Theater, Subversive Affirmation, Creative Action with a carnevalesque atmosphere. The action was backed up by a website that is now offline.” (text from: Center for Communication & Civil Engagement)

Black Arts Movement: by Kalamu ya Salaam. Piece from the Oxford Companion to American Literature on the key cultural force of the Black Power movement of the 1960s and early 70s.

CommunityArts Network Reading Room: The Community Arts Network (CAN) is a portal to the field of community arts, providing news, documentation, theoretical writing, communications, research and educational information.

Pat Oliphant’s Anthem: Pat Oliphant won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1966, only two years after leaving his native Australia and coming to the United States. Oliphant has caricatured seven United States presidents and challenged many with his graphic commentary on numerous political and social issues. At this Library of Congress site, you can view some of his most influential cartoons of the past three decades.

Ann Telnaes – Editorial Cartoonist: Born in Sweden, Ann Telnaes’ editorial cartoons are syndicated with Cartoonists and Writers Syndicate/ New York Times Syndicate. Her work has appeared in such prestigious publications as The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Le Monde, Courrier International, The Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Newsday, The New York Times, Austin American Statesman,The American Prospect and Ms magazine. Telnaes also contributes an exclusive weekly cartoon to Women’s eNews, an online news service.

McGrath, Ben. “Why do editors keep throwing “The Boondocks” off the funnies page?” The New Yorker, 2004-04-19: ” On the day of Saddam Hussein’s capture, last December, the left-leaning political weekly The Nation celebrated its hundred-and-thirty-eighth birthday. It was a Sunday night, and the weather was dreadful—forbiddingly cold and wet, heavy snow giving way to sleet—but three hundred people could not be deterred from dropping five hundred dollars a plate for roast chicken amid the marble-and-velvet splendor of the Metropolitan Club . . .”.

The Boondocks: Aaron McGruder’s “The Boondocks” reflects the racial diversity and complexity of our world. Combining childhood antics with contemporary political and social satire, the strip explores the terrain where dashikis and Brand Nubian CDs meet The Gap and Hanson.

Cagle Cartoons: A great source for political cartoons and “provocative pundits.”